The greening of Dell notebooks

Energy Star 4.0 badges for new launches

Dell, the green movement's most recent recruit, is trumpeting yet another be-kind-to-the-environment initiative. This time it's mobile workstations and notebooks that have been greenwashed, with the firm's latest launches, the Dell D430 Notebook and the Dell Precision M4300 mobile workstation earning the Environmental Protection Agency's newest Energy Star 4.0 badge.

Dell may be a recent convert to things green and it is too early to tell if commitment runs deep. But its ambitions are clear: it wants to be "the greenest technology company". And this is a nice goal, especially if it prompts Dell's rivals to try to outgreen the company.

In recent months, the company has been tapping customers for cash to plant trees in the US and in Europe. Michael Dell, the multibillionaire Dell chief, says he will match donations out of his own pocket.

Dell's also launched cooler servers that need less energy to run (here and here).

On the personal computing front Dell now has 10 PCs, notebooks and mobile workstations that comply with Energy Star 4.0 standards - more than any competitor, it claims. It is also climbing aboard the solid state drive (SSD) bandwagon, by offering ssds as an option for the Latitude D430 and the Dell Precision M4300. The company already offers the drive on the Latitude D630 and D830.

One day, SSDs will rule the world - but not yet. They are harder to break, aid better perfomance and reduce boot time. But they are more expensive than traditional hard drives and capacity is generally lower. It's going to take a good few years before the market switches wholesale to SSDs.

The Dell Latitude 430 starts at $1,509 and the Dell Precision M43000 starts at $1,750. We could go over the specs, but Dell rigs are highly customizable. So if you wanna know more, check out the website. We did - both models mention SSDs as an option, but we were too stupid to find a way of actually adding them to the shopping cart. ®